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Leaving Home for College: Expectations for Selective Reconstruction of Self
Abstract
This paper describes how 23 primarily upper-middle-class high school seniors anticipated identity changes as they prepared to leave home for college. The transition from high school to college is a period of “liminality” during which students are structurally in between old and new statuses. We discuss how students anticipated change, planned to affirm certain of their identities, imagined creating new identities, and contemplated discovering unanticipated identities. Such interpretive effort must be understood in the context of the ambivalence they felt about leaving home and achieving independence. The data also provoke discussion of how social class membership might be implicated in people's ability to control identity change as they move through the life course.
... They may do have some ideas, but understanding situation of academic or social life is in the real life might not be fulfilled yet . The shift from secondary school to university is commonly viewed as a time when individuals find themselves in a state of limbo between their past and future roles (Karp et al., 1998). This going to college is not like going back to school (Shatkin, 2007). ...
... In college, students merge new aspects of their personal identities into their beings (Karp et al., 1998). Hence, this transition requires students to mentally prepare themselves as they evaluate fixed identities and aspire to create new ones. ...
... Hence, this transition requires students to mentally prepare themselves as they evaluate fixed identities and aspire to create new ones. Additionally, they will consider various identities that they may encounter during their college years (Karp et al., 1998). As a result, adults in this developmental stage tend to take different roles to explore and solidify their personal identity. ...
Adjustment disorders refer to the psychological reactions to adapt to new circumstances, including situations such as divorce, major work change, transition from school to university, or migration. This study aimed at summarizing adjustment disorders in a single short paper by using different recent sources and references. This review article was conducted by using deferent recently published articles considering adjustment disorders generally and its occurrence among first year student of colleges specifically. Adjustment disorders are very common mental health issues that arise in response to significant changes in life style and warrant proper assessment and evaluation in order to maximize daily functioning.
... Going to college, working in a new company or moving to a new country leads new friends and acquaintances. Most people also maintain connections from their previous social circles [5]. Developing a new social circle while maintaining an old one presents important challenges for relational communication and self-disclosure, with different levels of familiarity and relational goals across the old and new social circles [7]. ...
... Given that people generally have a higher level of familiarity and closeness with contacts in older social circles [5], according to social penetration theory, selfdisclosure with old social circles should be more intimate relative to new social circles, which should be limited to peripheral information [7]. Moreover, the desire to maintain existing relationships and feel understood by intimate acquaintances should motivate more open and honest disclosures when communicating with contacts in older social circles relative to new ones [2]. ...
... Moreover, the desire to maintain existing relationships and feel understood by intimate acquaintances should motivate more open and honest disclosures when communicating with contacts in older social circles relative to new ones [2]. In contrast, adapting to new social circles and establishing new social ties should motivate more strategic constructions of one"s public identity, such as creating a more positive and more idealized image of oneself [5]. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. ...
In this paper, we analyze the way in which international Facebook users who had recently moved to the United States used different languages to selectively self-disclose to their old (native-language) and new (English-speaking) social circles. We found significantly more intimate self-disclosure, covering a broader range of cognitive and emotional topics, in native-language status updates compared to updates in English. Self-disclosure was also more positive in English. These patterns support our hypotheses that users exploit language barriers to serve different self-presentational goals for different social circles and generate implications for SNS privacy control.
... (p. 132) Similarly, Karp et al. (1998) concluded, "It is not especially surprising that one of the most consistent and universal patterns in our data is the effort expended by students to find a school where 'a person like me will feel comfortable'" (p. 275). ...
... In a much earlier study, Armstrong and Lumsden (1999) recommended the use of promotional materials that feature appealing colors and "meaningful photographs (i.e., of Black students)" (p. 83), whereas Karp et al. (1998) advised promotional materials should "speak the students' language and show campus life in realistic, relevant ways" (p. 275), as students are looking for a good fit. ...
Given the steady decline in undergraduate admissions over the past decade, universities in the United States have a unique imperative to use positive, targeted, and niche marketing techniques that focus on building brand equity among members of underrepresented groups, including Black students. Despite significant efforts by university leaders and policymakers to promote equal opportunities in the United States, multiple barriers to education continue to impede Black students. Traditional boundaries are well known and researched; however, an additional hurdle lies in the lack of transparency about specific benefits higher education can deliver to Black students. Without access to a deeper understanding, Black prospective students tend to find it difficult to make an informed decision about whether to pursue higher education. Highlighting the benefits of a product or service is a common sales tactic used by university recruiters because the relative salience of benefits and risks is critical to buyers’ purchasing decisions. If employed correctly, a targeted marketing strategy can positively influence Black students’ decisions about whether to pursue higher education, with downstream outcomes in support of their financial wellness and career paths that benefit society as a whole.
... In this study, we theorize smoker identity construction in China from a symbolic interactionist standpoint. Although models of identity transition during adolescence are not new to the literature (e.g., Erikson 1950;Karp, Holmstrom, and Gray 1998), smoking as a medium for identity change has been overlooked. Yet this critical point in life is a time of vulnerability for smoking initiation, and many young people internalize smoker identities which profoundly influence their lives (Denscombe 2001). ...
... Thus, fake smoking can be regarded as a liminal period when a young person had begun to drop the non-smoker status but was not regarded as a smoker or even as smoking, in-between old (non-smoker) and new (smoker) statuses-and ultimately on the cusp of a major change of identity (Karp, Holmstrom, and Gray 1998;van Gennep [1909van Gennep [ ] 1960. Becker (1953) also concluded that learning to smoke properly was a starting point for becoming a smoker. ...
In this study, we analyzed identity construction among young smokers in China, with three interconnected objectives: to theorize the turning points and career trajectory of smoking initiation; to account for their characteristics with interactionist processes; and to critically evaluate the applicability of classic typologies of identity change by Becker and Strauss. In‐depth interviews with 24 late adolescents (ages 18–19) revealed a smoking initiation career path of four interconnected turning points, each characterized by interactionist processes. Smoker peers played a key role in facilitating overall career progression, and shame avoidance was crucial to their social dynamics. We also conclude that classic studies of turning points in general, and substance use specifically, are sufficiently broad and flexible to elucidate tobacco smoker identity construction in China, and facilitate a comparison of commonality and divergence among different “becoming” identities. The implications of these findings for tobacco control in China are discussed.
... This paper adopts the concept of future horizons, rather than future plans, because young adults can imagine multiple future identities in their life course transition to adulthood (Karp et al., 1998) when many decisions still lay ahead. As such the future plans of young adults are still vague. ...
This paper presents insight into how rural young adults in the rural areas of Oost-Groningen, The Netherlands, and Südharz, Germany, deal with their rural identity with regard to different future horizons. This paper applies future horizons instead of intended future plans to emphasize the open and uncertain nature of young adults' aspired future. Based on 15 biographical interviews and a survey to geographically contextualize these interviews , the results show how rural young adults can have parallel future horizons to maintain several options open in which they all aim to preserve a rural identity. This paper illustrates how rural young adults compromise a rural identity with aspirations elsewhere in a staying or rural horizon elsewhere. In addition, the results show how they deal with rural identities by further internalizing and externalizing their rural identities with variations of embracing aspects of a rural identity with regard to different future horizons. The paper concludes that young adults can be considered, however also out of uncertainty about the future, as active participants of their future who apply parallel and temporal horizons and still preserve a rural identity. RQ: "How do young adults from Oost-Groningen and Südharz, who are still in education and reside with their parents, negotiate a rural identity in future horizons?" Ethics approval statement This paper has been approved by ethics committee of the faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen.
... Uncertainty about these social interactions worries many college students (Chemers et al., 2001;Yazedjian et al., 2007). Studies have shown that rst-year students reported loneliness, con ict, and distress about interpersonal relationships (Banjong, 2015;Conley et al., 2013;Karp et al., 1998;Nicpon et al., 2006). Another study found that college social experiences did not meet students' expectations because they did not develop meaningful friendships and missed their friends from home (Paul & Brier, 2001). ...
... For most first-time/first-year first-generation college students, the idea of making new friends is also filled with uncertainty. According to Karp and Holmstrom (1998), freshmen students are excited about new friends but worry about leaving their old friends. They know they need to make a social life for themselves in the new campus environment but worry that perhaps they will not. ...
The primary purpose of this study was to determine the differences in the levels of social engagement between first-generation and other college students enrolled in a STEM discipline at a Historically Black College and University. A two-group ex post facto research design using a single questionnaire was used for the study. A stratified sample of 90 college students participated in the study. The data for the research questions were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics based upon the subscales of the College Student Experiences Questionnaire. These findings indicated that there were significant differences among first-generation and other college students who were enrolled in a STEM discipline at an HBCU. Statistically significant differences between first-generation and other college students were found for three items in the social integration category: “met other students,” (p = .017, η2 = .063); “used campus recreational facilities,” (p = .050, η2 = .043); and “became acquainted with students,” (p = .035, η2 = .050). Both groups felt that meeting others would happen “often.” Both groups differ for using campus recreational facilities and becoming acquainted with students whose family backgrounds were different. Firstgeneration students reported that “occasionally” and “often”; and the other college students felt “often” and “very often” that using campus recreational facilities and becoming acquainted with students whose family background was different would happen. The study documented the impact of the nurturing environment that exists at an HBCU and focused on the social engagement aspects of attending college. The study findings provide clues to ways that college administrators and researchers can assist first-generation college students enrolled in a STEM discipline at an HBCU. Implications for future research and policymakers are discussed.
... This phenomenon suggests that for some reason the student who was successful in secondary school becomes unsuccessful at college. A variety of factors can be linked to this, including a newfound independence, personal management, and intellectual ability (Karp, Holmstrom, & Gray, 1998). Higher education typically does not look to the secondary school environment for help in identifying why students are successful or unsuccessful, but typically blame the secondary school for failing to adequately prepare students. ...
New student orientation programs typically have been developed from the perspective of what new students need upon their arrival on a 4-year college campus. There is little consideration given to the environment from which students come, namely, the secondary and high schools from which students graduate. The current study study explores what secondary school administrators perceive to be the most important elements that should be included in an orientation program. This perspective, which largely supports the inclusion of all the Council for the Advancement of Standards' Standards for New Student Orientation, particularly noted the need for orientation programs to help the student identify the personal and financial costs (and benefits) of attending college.
... Second, high schools and higher education establishments are not aligned in terms of accountability, information, and data systems (Kirst & Bracco, 2004;Venezia, Kirst, & Antonio, 2003). Third, student expectations are not always consistent with what is expected of the students at the college level (Karp, Holmstrom & Gray, 1998;Smith & Wertlieb, 2005). Finally, there has been a concern that high school students are not socially prepared to tackle the challenges posed by independent life being away from the parents (Holmstrom, Karp, & Gray, 2002;Tan, 1996). ...
The Ohio Education Research Center (OERC) is a COLLABORATIVE of Ohio-based researchers from six universities (Case The MISSION of the OERC is to develop and implement a statewide, preschool-through-workforce research agenda addressing critical issues of education practice and policy. The OERC identifies and shares successful practices, responds to the needs of Ohio's educators and policymakers, and signals emerging trends. The OERC communicates its findings broadly, through multiple platforms and networks, producing materials, products and tools to improve educational practice, policy and outcomes. The VISION of the OERC is to be the source for cutting edge knowledge and resources regarding education and training for Ohio's educators, policymakers and community leaders creating a dynamic cycle of research and practice where the needs of practitioners drive the research agenda and high-quality research has a rapid impact upon practice in the field. ABSTRACT The Collaborating on Economic Success in Appalachia (COESA) partnership was one of fourteen high school-higher education alignment consortia funded by the Ohio Department of Education to address the curricular misalignment between high school and college that contributes to close to half of Ohio's college freshman enrolling in remedial coursework during their freshman year of college. COESA completed a planning/gap analysis phase in 2012 and implemented Year 1 of alignment work during the 2012-13 academic year. This case study focuses on the perspectives of participating high school teachers and higher education faculty regarding high school-higher education alignment and measures the initial network development among the consortium participants. The case study sample consists of four high schools that are representative of the 18 participating high schools, as well as the three higher education institutions in the collaborative. The case study deploys a single-case design with multiple, imbedded units of analysis. Semi-structured interviews with high school teachers, principals, higher education faculty, and college administrators were combined with a social network analysis designed to identify involvement of, and relationships among, high school teachers and higher education faculty in the consortium. Findings from the Year 1 case study indicate: • There is a lack of common baseline data across high schools and even across IHEs regarding college readiness, course-taking patterns, course completion and persistence. The COESA pilot is compiling a common set of baseline data that can be used to track progress over the three-year project period and beyond. • There are still barriers present that prevent the full implementation of some of the suggested "fixes" for misalignment of high school and college curriculum. Dual enrollment and blended learning, for example, are difficult to implement on a larger scale due to infrastructure barriers and lack of consistent policies across institutions. • High school teachers and college faculty are aware that a different set of rigor and behavior expectations is likely contributing to low college readiness of many students in the region. • Social network analysis at the end of Year 1 of implementation indicates the development of relationships between high school teachers and college faculty, with faculty having more connections than high school teachers in the consortium. • Several innovations were piloted during Year 1 of implementation, including subject-specific workshops bringing together high school teachers and IHE faculty, and a county-wide syllabus for a rigorous 12th grade mathematics course jointly developed by high school teachers and IHE faculty.
... Second, high schools and higher education establishments are not aligned in terms of accountability, information, and data systems (Kirst & Bracco, 2004;Venezia, Kirst, & Antonio, 2003). Third, student expectations are not always consistent with what is expected of the students at the college level (Karp, Holmstrom & Gray, 1998;Smith & Wertlieb, 2005). Finally, there has been a concern that high school students are not socially prepared to tackle the challenges posed by independent life being away from the parents (Holmstrom, Karp, & Gray, 2002;Tan, 1996). ...
This case study documents the second year of implementation of the Collaborating on Economic Success in Appalachia (COESA) partnership. COESA was one of fourteen high school-higher education alignment consortia funded by the Ohio Department of Education to address the curricular misalignment between high school and college that contributes to close to half of Ohio’s college freshman enrolling in remedial coursework during their freshman year of college. COESA completed a planning/gap analysis phase in 2012 and implemented Year 1 of alignment work during the 2012-13 academic year. This case study focuses on the perspectives of participating high school teachers and higher education faculty regarding high school-higher education alignment and measures the initial network development among the consortium participants.
... Holmstrom, Karp, and Gray (2002) also note that family connections particularly change when a student goes to college. College offers the opportunity for students to gain independence from their parents and reinvent themselves (Karp, Holmstrom, & Gray, 1998). Indeed, Karp and colleagues note that the transition to college is a "major status change" whereby students can discard identities or aspects they disliked about themselves in high school and take on new ones (p. ...
We focus our study on children of immigrants in science, technology, math, and engineering (STEM) fields because children of immigrants represent a diverse pool of future talent in those fields. We posit that children of immigrants may have a higher propensity to prepare for entering STEM fields, and our analysis finds some evidence to support this conjecture. Using the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS: 88-00) and its restricted postsecondary transcript data, we examine three key milestones in the STEM pipeline: (1) highest math course taken during high school, (2) initial college major in STEM, and (3) bachelor’s degree attainment in STEM. Using individual level NELS data and country-level information from UNESCO and NSF, we find that children of immigrants of various countries of origin, with the exception of Mexicans, are more likely than children of natives to take higher-level math courses during high school. Asian and white children of immigrants are more likely to complete STEM degrees than third-generation whites. Drawing on theories of immigrant incorporation and cultural capital, we discuss the rationales for these patterns and the policy implications of these findings.
... These are not new representations of elite campuses; in fact, the phenomenon is often referred to self-mockingly as the the bubble. According to Karp, Holmstrom, and Gray (1998) there is a collective sense in the psyche of adolescence that college is a "liminal" space, one marked by separation and isolation in which one enters a particular way and exits transformed. The college campus provides a physical manifestation for a powerful narrative component of identity and intellectual development. ...
The Disney/Pixar film, Monsters University (2013) was a tremendous financial success. As a film written entirely about college students and their quest for social and economic attainment, but marketed primarily to children and adolescents, its messages about the purpose of college and the college experience deserve close examination given its widespread popularity. Theorists have argued that popular fiction (Tompkins, 1986 Tompkins, J. (1986). Sensational designs: The cultural work of American fiction, 1790–1860. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]), especially film (Giroux, 1996 Giroux, H. A. (1996). White panic and the racial coding of violence. Fugitive cultures: Race, violence, and youth, 27–54. [Google Scholar], 2008 Giroux, H. A. (2008). Hollywood film as public pedagogy: Education in the crossfire. Afterimage, 35(5), 7–13. [Google Scholar]; Gregory, 2007 Gregory, M. (2007). Real and teaching and real learning vs. narrative myths about education. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 6(1), 7–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022207072197.[Crossref] [Google Scholar]; Peterson, 2009), is a powerful vehicle for creating, reflecting, and reinforcing social values and norms. This article examines the film closely to challenge the many explicit and implicit stereotypes it portrays regarding meritocracy, elitism, and gender and reflects on the role of friendship in a neoliberal society.
... The identity crisis that students face as they begin their college journey is just one of any new social and emotional stressors that first year students face that contributes to their decision to continue to their second year (Karp, Holmstrom & Gray, 1998;Smith & Wertlieb, 2005). ...
... Keywords: black men, masculinity, manhood, appearance ideals, body management The college or university experience represents a critical developmental period in the lives of young men and women; in addition to navigating academic stressors, it is a time in which students are learning to negotiate their identities, bodies, sexualities, and relationships in new ways (Crocker et al. 1994;Paul, McManus, and Hayes 2000;Smith and Moore 2000). To that end, Hitlin (2003:133), citing Karp and Homstrom (1998), notes, "College is an arena in which (mainly) middle class youths intend to 'find themselves' and construct a sense of self that 'feels right.'" During this life stage, body image issues are typically salient among young people, regardless of race. ...
Through a qualitative analysis of twenty-nine black college men at a large research university, this project explores how black masculinity is physically, behaviorally, and materially constructed from idealized images resulting in a contextually adaptive sense of self. The findings suggest that black masculinity, specifically the thug image, is symbolically affirmed or denied through a particular type of raced, gendered, classed, and sexualized discourse within black public social spaces. Moreover, these data show that maintaining this construction of black masculinity promotes bodily self-doubt or insecurity and inauthentic intra- and interracial interactions. In contrast, black manhood is thought to involve more genuine interactions, regardless of the social location. Unlike doing masculinity, the idealized notion of being men allows young black men to project a future construction of self that seemingly resolves their feelings of inauthenticity or bodily insecurity.
... Many of a vacation's pre-and posttrip rituals, and the connections made to home during the trip, involve some effort at maintaining social relationships and reaffirming one's place in the community through, for example, going-away parties, gifts, and postcards. Because of this interconnected nature, the vacation identity is one that can be thought of as simultaneously independent and dependent of social ties (Karp, Holmstrom, and Gray 1998), requiring a conscious management of a desire for independence with the need for connection. ...
When individuals go on vacation they take on a temporary “vacation identity.” Vacationers use props, behaviors, and interactions with traveling companions to define and bound the experience as separate and different from everyday life. Data are drawn from twenty in-depth interviews and participant observation with sixty international tourists in China during the summer of 2008. Vacationers' participation in rites and routines and impression management techniques helped them construct a personally meaningful, yet short-lived identity. The results underscore the influence of others in identity construction and point to the importance of a nonpresent other in creating and presenting identities.
... Many philosophers and psychologists agree that for a person to develop his or her full potential, it is necessary to take on challenges outside the home (Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton, 1981;Karp, 1998). The family, no matter how warm and fulfilling, cannot provide the contexts for actions that are necessary for the growth of the self. ...
This research is one of the first explorations of Chinese immigrant ageing in place, which also considers changing enactments of filial piety. The research is informed by a hybrid narrative approach that draws on episodic, go-along and fangtan interview techniques. The book shifts away from the focus in existing literature on how older Chinese immigrants are passively transformed into minority subjects to how they are transforming themselves through migration and their efforts to age well in New Zealand. This book offers new ways of understanding the dynamics of ageing in little-known Chinese migrant communities in contemporary, Western societies. Using an innovative, indigenous approach to narrative interviewing, the author provides a compelling case study of ageing and home-making experiences of older Chinese people who have migrated to New Zealand in their later lives. The study highlights positive ways in which older Chinese immigrants age, adapt cultural practices and transform their selves and identities.
... Involvement in the early tasks and trappings of an occupation in college or before college are also investments of time, effort and money by the individual and the individual's parents. Also a particular "role" taken on by a young person may be supported by parents and other mentors, thus creating an interpersonal social structure that constrains (Becker andCarper, 1970 [1956] ;Becker, 1970;Karp and Holmstrom, 1998). Attachment to the role of "future journalist," for example, may be strengthened by support from parents, friends, teachers and school counselors. ...
... For some, it may be the first time that they have the responsibility of waking themselves up for classes, getting along with roommates, making new friends, or confronting choices about drinking and dating. These are only a few of the potentially new social and emotional stressors that the first-year college student faces (Karp, Holmstrom, & Gray, 1998). Many students are ill-prepared for these changes, partly because college and high school have different standards and expectations (Venezia et al., 2003). ...
First-year college students expectations about "what college is like" do not always align with their actual experiences. This study examined 31 first-year students social and academic expectations and compared those expectations with students' experiences at the middle and end of their first year of college. Paired t tests revealed that students' academic and social expectations did not align with their first-year experiences. Academic and social expectations/experiences were not statistically significant predictors of first-year academic achievement. However, students with unrealistic high social or academic expectations had lower first-year grade point averages (GPAs) than students with average or below-average expectations. Recommendations for increasing high school and college collaboration to assist students with the transition to college are included.
... Every society and culture includes points in life and development when rites, rituals, institutional expectations, or regulations cause individuals to reflect on their behavior and identity (Adams and Marshall 1996). Leaving home for college is one such transition for young adults in the United States (Karp, Holmstrom, and Gray 1998). During college, young men and women become increasingly independent and responsible and receive cultural permission to participate in adult behaviors. ...
This study explores the process of religious identity formation and examines the emergence of religion as the most salient source of personal and social identity for a group of second-generation Muslim Americans. Drawing on data gathered through participant observation, focus groups, and individual interviews with Muslim university students in New York and Colorado, three stages of religious identity development are presented: religion as ascribed identity; religion as chosen identity; and religion as declared identity. This research illustrates how religious identity emerges in social and historical context and demonstrates that its development is variable rather than static. Additionally, I discuss the impacts of September 11 and show how a crisis event can impel a particular identity - in this case, religious - to become even more central to an individual's concept of self. Through asserting the primacy of their religious identity over other forms of social identity, religion became a powerful base of personal identification and collective association for these young Muslims.
... In the case of the Balinghou, immaturity could be one such unflattering definition. Labels applied by influential players in our lives can impact our self-fashioning (Karp et al., 1998). However, from the perspective of symbolic interactionism, the actor is in control of their reaction to the label, the manner by which he or she adopts it, and the extent to which it is incorporated into their conception of self (Herman-Kinney, 2003, p. 711). ...
Thirty years after the post-Mao reforms, twenty years after the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, the next generation of “comrades” is emerging in China. They are called the Balinghou, or the “Post-80s” generation, referring to the cohort born between 1980 and 1989. This article is taken from a broader study on the narrative resources that Shanghai's Post-80s young adults call on to construct their identities, given the historical situation in which they live. Symbolic interactionism is useful for studying identity construction processes across cultural contexts, particularly in China where interactionist concepts have seen limited application to date. The discussion also explores the theoretical implications of structural elements that significantly alter the resources available for identity construction, such as the One Child Policy.
... It is very important to stress that this is not hypothesis formulation and testing. Ezzy Ezzy (2002) highlights this point by quoting (Karp et al. 1998) ''Consistent with the logic of grounded theory, this study did not begin with any explicit hypothesis testing. Instead we began with broad sensitizing questions.''. ...
Distributed software development has become the norm for the software industry today. Asa result many organizations are leveraging the expertise of their existing staff by establishing virtual teams. Here we outline the results from three independent case studies undertaken over a period of 8 years. The first study considered the operation of virtual teams whose members were situated in two locations in the same country. The second investigated why U.S. and Irish team members who worked very successfully while collocated, experienced serious problems when operating in virtual teams. The third focused on virtual testing teams with members based in Ireland and Malaysia. The Irish staffs had extensive experience of having projects offshored to them and were now responsible for offshoring part of their work. The results from each case study highlighted the importance and impact fear played and the consequences this had for the success of the respective strategies
Between the late 1980s and early 1990s, the rock music genre which became known as ‘grunge’ put Seattle, Washington in the cultural limelight. However, it had been since the late 1970s that independent music – much of it emanating from scenes in American ‘college towns’ – had been shaping the underground musical landscape of the United States. This meant that while Seattle captured the global imagination by 1991 with its hard-hitting punk-meets-metal sound, DIY scenes continued to blossom in towns and cities across America. For both Olympia and Bellingham, Washington, two college towns with close proximity to Seattle, the early 1990s – with grunge's international recognition – proved an interesting and unusual time to exert local musical sensibilities. This article charts the opportunities and challenges that these two Seattle-adjacent music scenes experienced while creating and maintaining their individual identities during the heyday of grunge.
This chapter analyzed expectations, culture, and adaptation to higher education institutions by first-year students. By adopting a conceptual review as framework, data were obtained from published literature. The results presented in the chapter indicated that most first-year students have unrealistic expectations and that the university culture often presents new and confusing expectations to the majority of first-year students. Moreover, many students are still starting their experience with either high or unrealistic expectations for what to expect during their first year of university. It is recommended that the managers of universities should develop more positive alignment between perceived expectations and levels of student satisfaction with the quality of their experience.
The present study aimed to explore how economic and social resources interact with emerging adults’ vocational identity development. Emerging adults ( N = 108) from different socioeconomic backgrounds in Turkey were interviewed. Participants' reflections on the intersection between socioeconomic resources and vocational identity development were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Results revealed that access to economic and social resources was described as a mediating factor between vocational choices and identity expression. Participants’ reports also showed that economic and social resources interacted with vocational identity development by affecting vocational exploration, expectations of vocational choices, perceived support and guidance, and future projections. While participants’ socioeconomic background was a significant factor affecting the prevalence of participants’ experiences, connections between the subthemes also indicated different clusters of experiences. Results provide important insights regarding the intersection between socioeconomic resources and vocational identity and the boundary and promoting factors leading emerging adults to pursue their vocational aspirations.
Self‐concept (SC), a multidimensional construct, consistently predicts expected outcomes. Of importance, however, having high SC on even one dimension can be protective. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses of the data of 239 college men suggest that feeling positive about one's relationships protects men who feel fat from experiencing symptoms of depression at the intensity of their similarly body‐dissatisfied peers who do not report positive Family or Social SC. The authors discuss implications for college personnel.
I performed a qualitative content analysis of 136 college students' food diary reflection papers to examine the accounts used when explaining dietary failures. In addition to common justifications (denials of injury, appeals to higher loyalties, and condemning the condemners) and excuses (denials of responsibility and postponement), diarists referred to their status as a college student and the “typical college student lifestyle” as the major reason for eating an unhealthy diet. Exploring how students use life stages to neutralize stigma adds a new temporal and context-focused dimension to studies of accounts and provides direction for potential health interventions.
Home and the transition to adulthood are related temporal and spatial constructs. Building upon Kenyon’s [1999. “A home from home: Students’ transitional experience of home.” In Ideal homes? Social change and domestic life, edited by T. Chapman, 84–95. New York: Routledge] categorization of physical, social, personal, and temporal elements of home for college students, we analyze survey responses from 256 students at a 4-year U.S. residential college in order to uncover how perceptions of home-like spaces change as students move from pre-college homes, through on- and off-campus home spaces, and toward imagined future homes. Our quantitative findings show that the four home elements matter differently across time and type of home, supported by qualitative findings wherein students articulate how they conceptualize similarities and differences between the different home spaces. This study adds to ongoing conceptualizations of the transition to adulthood as placed (for four-year residential college students especially), and as fluid and multilayered in terms of social actors’ views of their past, present, and imagined future homes and accompanying identity transitions.
There is an abundance of research demonstrating the benefits associated with having a sense of purpose in life, but much of this work utilizes academic (high school or college students) or well-educated adult samples. This study compared adults who graduated from college to adults with no or some college experience on a number of dimensions related to purpose development, including: the process of exploration (purpose pathway), overall level of purpose, and the content of one’s purpose (purpose orientation). The relationship between purpose and psychological assets such as agency and subjective well-being was also compared across groups. Results demonstrated that there were no differences by education level with regard to overall level of purpose or one’s purpose pathways, but education predicted purpose orientation and agency, even when controlling for purpose. The lack of difference in purpose between adults with different levels of education bodes well for the field, which has relied heavily on college student samples. Implications for existing and future research on purpose in life are discussed.
Greater diversity in life courses has become both possible and real in the twenty-first century, affecting the relocation behaviours of individuals. Therefore, it is logical that the relocation patterns of minorities have been receiving increasing attention. In particular, the migration patterns of gay men have been studied, with a focus on the embodied reasons for mobility. This downsized analysis has shown the importance of identity building and identity search. However, this article argues that analysis of migration among gay men also needs to be upsized. This study aims to show how both context and embodiment has affected the mobility of gay men. Through a case study within the context of a strong welfare state (Sweden) that adopted sexual equality early, gay men’s motives for migration are studied. The results suggest that the migration patterns of gay men are becoming more similar to those of the general population. This finding shows that current conceptualisations of the migration patterns of gay men can be advanced by acknowledging contextual effects. The integration of a downsized and an upsized understanding also offers the possibility of moving beyond the identity specifics showing that populations are becoming increasingly diverse and homogeneous simultaneously.
Collegiate a cappella, part of a long tradition of unaccompanied singing, is known to date back on American college campuses to at least the colonial era. Considered in the context of college glee clubs, barbershop quartets, early-twentieth-century vocal pop groups, doo-wop groups, and late-twentieth-century a cappella manifestations in pop music, collegiate a cappella is an extension of a very old tradition of close harmony singing-one that includes but also goes beyond the founding of the Yale Whiffenpoofs. Yet despite this important history, collegiate a cappella has until now never been the subject of scholarly examination. In Powerful Voices: The Musical and Social World of Collegiate A Cappella, Joshua S. Duchan offers the first thorough accounting of the music's history and reveals how the critical issues of sociability, gender, performance, and technology affect its music and experience. Just as importantly, Duchan provides a vital contribution to music scholarship more broadly, in several important ways: by expanding the small body of literature on choruses and amateur music; by addressing musical and social processes in a field where the vast majority of scholarship focuses on individuals and their products; and by highlighting a musical context long neglected by musicologists-the college campus. Ultimately, Powerful Voices is a window on a world of amateur music that has begun to expand its reach internationally, carrying this uniquely American musical form to new global audiences, while playing an important role in the social, cultural, and musical education of countless singers over the last century.
Personal identity is an underanalyzed level of the self, often regarded erroneously as too idiosyncratic for proper social psychological analysis. The two dominant theories of self, identity theory and social identity theory, mention but rarely explicate the concept of personal identity. In this paper I address this gap by making two moves, one conceptual and one empirical. First, I argue that values are a cohesive force within personal identity. Conceptualizing values as the core of one's personal identity leads toward understanding the cohesion experienced among one's various social identities. In the second, empirical move, I use measures of a key dimension along which values are arrayed (self-enhancement vs. self-transcendence) to illustrate how a values-based conception of personal identity influences the formation of a role identity. Specifically, theoretically relevant values along the self-enhancement/self-transcendence dimension are significant predictors of the volunteer identity, even when previous measures of the identity are controlled. I conclude by discussing the utility of values for studying a level of the self often considered too ideographic for sociological analysis.
The purpose of this article is to enrich our conceptual understanding of ethnography through principles of design by offering a blueprint for ethnographic ways of knowing. Drawing on published ethnographic research, this article develops and defines principles of design that help facilitate the process and product of ethnographic research. Through the metaphor of an architectural blueprint, we consider the epistemological value of identifying foundational principles supporting ethnographic research and writing. The architectural blueprint offers a foundation for creating, writing, revising, teaching, and evaluating ethnographic scholarship. The article closes with a discussion of the utility of the metaphor as well as how other metaphors that currently guide ethnographic research could be used in tandem with the blueprint metaphor.
Collegiate a cappella is an American musical genre and practice in which self-directed groups of college student singers arrange, perform, and record popular songs without accompaniment. One of its stylistic goals is emulation: its songs should sound like the original artists' recordings, even though they are now a cappella, that is, limited only to voices (Duchan 2007). Group lineups (which may be all-male, all-female, or mixed) are transient, so their recordings comprise particular collections of voices singing particular songs at a particular time, as well as historical records of musical and cultural practice.
Vocal ensembles have existed at American colleges since the colonial and early Federalist eras (Buechner 2003, Kegerreis 1986) and continued throughout the nineteenth century in cases both well documented (e.g., the Fisk Jubilee Singers) and undocumented (e.g., the Cecilias, Owls, and Beethoven Bummers at Yale University). The college glee club, an ancestor of contemporary collegiate a cappella groups, began at Harvard University in 1858 and continues today, along with the barbershop quartet tradition, which began in the late 1800s and has included college groups (Averill 2003). Despite these predecessors, some consider the Yale University Whiffenpoofs the "first" collegiate a cappella group: a prominent online timeline of the genre begins in 1909 with the Whiffenpoofs, claiming that year as the birth of collegiate a cappella ("A Century of A Cappella," n.d). Founded at Mory's Temple Bar, a New Haven pub, the Whiffenpoofs are the oldest a cappella group still active today (see Gould 2004), and their signature song, "The Whiffenpoof Song," has been famously covered by crooners Rudy Vallée ([1937] 1993), Bing Crosby (1947), and others. A cappella grew slowly during the twentieth century, but exploded in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s for several reasons, including a long history of a cappella singing in American education, the gradual coeducational integration of American higher education, several prominent a cappella pop hits (e.g., Billy Joel's "The Longest Time" in 1983 and Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy" in 1988), the rise of the Internet and its faster communicative powers, and the institutionalization of a cappella itself through websites, a professional society, and annual competitions (Duchan 2012:45-63).
With this growth and development, collegiate a cappella recordings saw considerable changes in both process and product, some of which met stiff resistance from members of the a cappella community. This review essay highlights several of those changes, considers their causes and effects, and discusses their reception in a cappella circles. Collegiate a cappella groups remain the primary focus, since they represent an American genre and practice on which scholarship has been virtually nonexistent.
Despite the lengthy examination of a cappella recordings offered here, it is worth noting that few singers join a cappella groups for the express purpose of recording. Instead, my ethnographic research found that most singers had participated in some kind of musical activity in high school (often a school- or church-sponsored choir) and sought opportunities to continue singing in college. But a cappella groups also serve a larger purpose, often made plain to singers in retrospect: they create a sense of community. College has long been a time of transition in the lives of young adults; for some it is their first experience at a distance from home and family. As they form their new identities in this context, student groups replace family, at least partially, as systems of support (Karp, Holmstrom, and Gray 1998). It is understandable, then, that a cappella singers frequently described their groups in terms of fraternity, sorority, and family.
The process of recording an album can become a common goal around which group members bond socially, spending hours huddled together in a studio, perfecting their parts and (hopefully) creating something of which they can be proud, a material emblem of both their efforts and their inclusion in the group. As Dave Ransom, music director of the co-ed Boston University Treblemakers put it: "To have a CD and say, 'this is what I did. Check this out. I'm proud of this.' It's really important" (personal communication). Recording sessions may be one of many types of activities...
Women face more barriers to their success than their men counterparts in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines. While much of the research on women’s experience in science has focused on their entry into or exit out of STEM fields (the “leaky pipeline”), less is known about the obstacles that women scientists face at work, due to the dearth of ethnographic work exploring gender and day-to-day experiences in the academic workplace. Using data from a qualitative study of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in chemistry involving over 120 hours of ethnographic observation and 40 semi-structured interviews, I focus specifically on the gendered nature of authority, expertise, and impression management to investigate several of the obstacles women scientists face at work.
In the first chapter, I investigate men and women graduate students’ and postdocs’ expectations of expertise. I argue that overall, men are more likely than their women peers to be seen as experts in chemistry. As a result, men graduate students benefit from more practice with skills that are applicable to their future careers: applying scientific knowledge to relevant questions and communicating this information to others.
In the second chapter, I focus on gender and graduate student socialization. I find that the link between men, science, and academia creates a context in which men do not need to work as hard to establish their claim to scientific authority. Therefore, men are able to perform masculinity in varied and complex ways, while women, who do not embody masculinity, feel more pressure to conform to strict norms of competition that are associated with traditional masculinity.
In the last chapter, I discuss the impression management strategies that men and women chemists-in-training use to navigate authority and expertise. I find that men are more likely than women to employ interactional styles that feature their expertise when in group situations, while women are more likely to minimize theirs. In contrast, while teaching, women sometimes use styles that align with masculinity rather than with femininity. Finally, men’s bodies occasionally eliminate men’s need for impression management in the classroom because being masculine grants them authority.
This article proposes a model of commitment to journalism among recent entrants to the occupation. The model is based on the concept of continuance commitment from the sociology of work literature. It is expected that workplace-related factors should affect level of occupational commitment, but it also is expected that greater investments made in pursuit of a journalism career during precollege and college years should lead to a higher level of commitment. The data show that job sentiments are strongly predictive of commitment, but precollege and college investments generally were not predictive in a direct way. Early socialization did indirectly predict pursuit of journalistic work. Once in the field, however, new journalists assess dedication to the occupation by extrapolating from organizational experiences. In general, data also suggest that commitment to journalism is predicted much like commitment to other types of communication occupations.
This analysis of student narratives explores various forms of passing encounters whereby individuals are not who they claim to be. I distinguish between (a) passing along highly stigmatized identities and everyday passing across less threatening ones; and (b) proactive passing, which individuals initiate, and reactive passing, in which individuals embrace an identity others have mistakenly assigned to them. These strategies are complex processes whereby individuals interactively negotiate definitions of the situation and sometimes give idealized performances. They underscore through contrast the sense of an authentic identity that enhances the stability of self. Although theorists claim that passing is inconsequential for the individual, the narratives in this study suggest that masking a central identity can be emotionally costly.
This article examines how parents experience the process of “letting go” of their college-bound children. The focus of our analysis is on how the parents evaluate the meanings of their children's leaving home and adopt strategies to facilitate the process for both themselves and the departing child. Our analysis is based on interviews with thirty sets of parents. The interview materials allowed us to recognize and then parse the paradoxical task faced by parents of fostering “attached individuation” for both themselves and their children. We address four broad and persistent themes that emerged from our conversations with parents. First, we consider how parents manage the range of sometimes-con•icting emotions generated by the letting go process. Second, we analyze the content of parents' worries as a good unobtrusive measure of how they understand the transition to college as a ritual marker in their children's lives. Third, we show how negotiations about geography—about proper distance from home—in choosing a college reflect efforts to impose a measure of gradualism into the letting go process. Fourth, we report on how parents theorize the impact of a child's departure on family relationships in general.
This article is part of a larger study looking at upper-middle-class, collegebound high school seniors and their parents as they go through the college application process. The seniors we interviewed expect college to be a transformative experience that will affect their identities. But they also know they will experience upheavals in the routines of everyday life as they face changes of place, changes in responsibility for tasks, and changes in familial relationships. At this point of upheaval their anxiety is focused more on issues such as how to get their laundry done than on whether they will understand thinkers such as Hegel. These college-bound students also see their ongoing transition to adulthood as a gradual, emerging process. The connection between social class and pathways to adulthood is explored.
Life course research assumes that development and change depend partly on individual agency, but often fails to elaborate. We posit that individuals exercise agency by pursuing self-related goals, specifically by trying to change themselves in ways that they believe will generate more favorable self-conceptions. Drawing upon sociological theories about self and identity, gender, stress and coping, and the life course, and upon psychological theories about goals, we analyze survey data on 376 college students to explore the process of self-change. More men than women pursue achievement-related goals, whereas more women than men seek to increase their self-confidence and to improve their appearance. Aspects of the extant self-conception (positive self-worth, self-deprecation, and self-efficacy) selectively influence individuals' motivations for self-change and their perceptions of their progress toward self-change. Self-deprecation is positively related to changing in order to raise one's self-esteem and to avert the danger of becoming a “feared” self, whereas self-efficacy is positively related to changing in order to increase authenticity and bring one closer to one's ideal self. Self-deprecation increases the perceived difficulty of self-change, whereas positive self-worth and self-efficacy increase expectations of success. Emotion-focused, cognitive strategies for self-change increase expectations of success, but emotion-focused, behavioral strategies decrease it.
This article considers the anxieties and risks that attend the process of self-production in the context of consumption. Drawing from interviews with a small sample of British young adults — white, middle-class, university-educated — the article examines how material practices and discursive strategies resonate with theoretical accounts of the nexus of consumption, identity and individualization. The analysis highlights how respondents discursively cope with anxieties and risks associated with the question of style, the problem of conformity, the desire for confidence and the negotiation of gender. In doing so, the article indicates ways in which the process of self-production in contemporary consumer societies may be less reflexive, and more socially conservative, than some accounts of individualization would suggest.
In this chapter I review the social psychological underpinnings of identity, emphasizing social cognitive and symbolic interactionist perspectives and research, and I turn then to key themes of current work on identity—social psychological, sociological, and interdisciplinary. I emphasize the social bases of identity, particularly identities based on ethnicity, race, sexuality, gender, class, age, and (dis)ability, both separately and as they intersect. I also take up identities based on space, both geographic and virtual. I discuss struggles over identities, organized by social inequalities, nationalisms, and social movements. I conclude by discussing postmodernist conceptions of identities as fluid, multidimensional, personalized social constructions that reflect sociohistorical contexts, approaches remarkably consistent with recent empirical social psychological research, and I argue explicitly for a politicized social psychology of identities that brings together the structures of everyday lives and the sociocultural realities in which those lives are lived.
“Identity … is a concept that neither imprisons (as does much in sociology) nor detaches (as does much in philosophy and psychology) persons from their social and symbolic universes, [so] it has over the years retained a generic force that few concepts in our field have.” ( Davis 1991 :105)
“[I]dentity is never a priori, nor a finished product; it is only ever the problematic process of access to an image of totality.” ( Bhabha 1994 :51)
This article asks how parents think about the cost of a college education for their children. Based on data from more than ninety in-depth interviews with upper-middle-class parents and children, it is clear that grooming children for college and then paying for their education is intimately linked with ideas about being a “good parent.” We present data on three related aspects of parents' consciousness about paying for college. First, data are presented on how parents view the benefits of college for their children. Second, data illustrate how parents think about the obligations associated with paying. Third, we report on what parents expect in return for their efforts and expenditures. Data also indicate that parents' views are contingent on their perceived ability to pay for the increasing costs of higher education. We conclude by considering how the implicit contract between upper-middle-class parents and children may change as new economic and structural uncertainties increase parents' anxieties and challenge their abilities to see themselves as good parents.
To probe the role that college context plays in influencing the class-based aspects of identity for lower income students,
we interviewed 30 lower income students, 15 from an elite college and 15 from a state college. Significant disparities of
wealth between students at the elite college heightened awareness of class, and led to feelings of intimidation, discomfort,
inadequacy, deficiency, exclusion, and powerlessness among lower income students, feelings that were less prevalent among
state college students. Students at both colleges acquired new forms of cultural capital and coped with class-based discontinuities
between who they were before college and who they were becoming, but these issues became heightened for the elite college
students.
The pathway through graduate school is challenging and difficult. Nearly everyone, at one point or another, confronts the existential question of whether they want to drop out or to continue. Several challenges emerge as key to graduate students’ success in progressing through their programs. p]The first is moving from the secure but sometimes suffocating structure of a core graduate cohort into the role of independent student. This requires navigating an individual pathway into areas of specialization and a mentor. Programs can do no more than make faculty and courses available; from there, students must make connections and decisions on their own.
The second critical transition involves moving from absorbing to creating knowledge. Accomplishing this requires that students grasp the conceptual foundation of the perspective (the “sociological eye”), learn how to gather data, to master the challenge of moving from immersion in the specificity of their research to contribute to more abstract theory, and to understand the conventions through which they must present their scholarly work.
Along the way there are myriad interpersonal challenges for them to negotiate. Allegiances that they forge are then relinquished to make way for new, more stage-relevant ones. Students often undergo radical changes in their values and consciousness as they progress through their programs. They are bonded into an equalitarian model of evaluation and support in their cohesive, early years in the cohort. But as they forge scholarly accomplishments and turn their eyes increasingly toward the discipline, they recognize that their democratic ideals must yield to the meritocratic reality of the profession.
Distributed software development has become the norm for the software industry today. As a result many organizations are leveraging the expertise of their existing staff by establishing virtual teams. Here we outline the results from three independent case studies undertaken over a period of eight years. The first study considered the operation of virtual teams whose members were situated in two locations in the same country. The second investigated why U.S. and Irish team members who worked very successfully while collocated, experienced serious problems when operating in virtual teams. The third focused on virtual testing teams with members based in Ireland and Malaysia. The Irish staff had extensive experience of having projects offshored to them and were now responsible for offshoring part of their work. The results from each case study highlighted the importance and impact fear played and the consequences this had for the success of the respective strategies.
Older Chinese immigrants are one of the largest ethnic ageing groups in New Zealand. However, people‘s everyday experiences of settling in a new and unfamiliar environment have been largely overlooked, particularly for older adults. This research explores the biographies, identities and everyday experiences of filial piety among older Chinese immigrants. Particular consideration is given to the role of filial piety in participants‘ housing and ageing experiences. This research is one of the first explorations of Chinese immigrant ageing in place, which also considers changing enactments of filial piety. The research is informed by a hybrid narrative approach that draws on episodic, go-along and fangtan interview techniques used with 32 older Chinese immigrants in Auckland and Hamilton. Findings support the importance of exploring positive experiences of migration and ageing. Older Chinese immigrants do often experience biographical disruptions and status-discrepancies when they move from China to New Zealand. However, in response, the participants engage in positive activities such as gardening and art as a means of cultivating a new sense of self and place in a new land that is compatible with their existing identities as older Chinese adults. The analysis explores the material-mediated basis for participant adjustment and acculturation. Through adaptive acculturation, older Chinese immigrants‘ abilities for both integrating into the host culture and maintaining their ethnic identities are realised. The analysis also demonstrates that traditional Chinese aged care models of family support with high level of intergenerational co-residence are evolving to encompass practices of filial piety at a distance and to encompass more pluralistic familial living arrangements. The analysis also demonstrates the importance of considering how ageing occurs beyond physical spaces and within cultural, social, relational and imagined landscapes. The analysis shifts away from the focus in existing literature on how older Chinese immigrants are passively transformed into minority subjects to how they are transforming themselves through migration and their efforts to age well in New Zealand.
My interest in role transitions stems from an interest in change and maintenance of a person’s self-concept.1 The last decade and a half has seen a renaissance of research on the function of the self (Wegner & Vallacher, 1980). Most of this social-psychological research has accepted the implicit assumption of a stable self, but more recently the stability and maintenance processes have also been topics of interest. It has been demonstrated that people react to challenges to their self-concept by selecting self-confirmatory feedback (Swann, in press), by trying to maintain their self-definition through social comparison processes (Tesser & Campbell, in press), or through the use of symbols of the self (Wicklund & Gollwitzer, 1982).
Mead's theory of the past, which contains his theory of temporality, is scrutinized for its relevance to sociological concerns. His theory is described, and four analytical dimensions are identified which provide the basis for discussing that relevance. Several standard areas of sociological endeavor are briefly analyzed in terms of those dimensions, and then a detailed analysis of community power relations is provided in light of his theory. It is concluded that Mead's theory of temporality is a powerful framework for organizing an array of sociological interests and problems.
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This work has been written for those who must work with and give care to the dying. The book's discussion is not a simple narrative or description; it is a "rendition of reality," informed by a rather densely woven and fairly abstract theoretical scheme. This scheme evolved gradually during the course of the author's research. The second audience for this volume is social scientists who are less interested in dying than they are in useful substantive theory. The training of physicians and nurses equips them for the technical aspects of dealing with illness. Medical students learn not to kill patients through error, and to save lives through diagnosis and treatment. But their teachers put little or no emphasis on how to talk with dying patients; how-or whether to disclose an impending death; or even how to approach the subject with families of the dying. Students of nursing are taught how to give nursing care to terminal patients, as well as how to give "post-mortem care." But the psychological aspects of dealing with the dying and their families are virtually absent from training. The process of dying in hospitals is much affected by professional training and codes, and by the particular conditions of work generated by hospitals as places of work. Dying is a social as well as a biological and psychological process. It is not simply leaving life. Unless the individual dies without kin or friends, and in such a way that their death is completely undiscovered their death is recorded. Their dying is inextricably bound up with the life of society.
Past investigations have documented that late adolescence is associated with developmental changes in identity formation resulting in individual differences in identity statuses. Particular attention has been given to the identification and study of diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, and identity achievement statuses. Drawing from the recent theoretical speculations by Cooper and Grotevant, an investigation was completed to assess the predictive utility of measures of family connectedness and individuality in differentiating among the four identity statuses. Data were obtained from male and female late adolescents and their mothers and fathers on perceptions of independence (individuality), communication, and emotional affection (connectedness). Differences among adolescents grouped into the four identity formation statuses were assessed using analysis of variance techniques comparing gender and identity status on measures of connectedness and individuality within a parent-adolescent relationship. Evidence consistent with the notion that a combination of emotional attachment to parents and the encouragement of independence striving by parents is associated with healthy identity development emerges from our data.
Questionnaire data from 376 undergraduates (mean age=19.3 years) were used to test a model describing interrelationships among deidealization, relatedness, autonomy, and insecurity in late adolescents' relationships with their parents. As expected, deidealization predicted greater autonomy and less relatedness (i.e., more disengagement), greater disengagement predicted greater insecurity, and greater insecurity predicted less autonomy. However, disengagement from parents proved to be a "double-edged sword" in that it was linked not only to insecurity, but also to feelings of greater separateness and self-directedness in relation, to parents. Additional analyses identified significant associations between the adolescent/parent relationship variables and the adolescents' psychological health and ego identity status.
Most research on role transitions, following a tradition pioneered by van Gennep, regards these major turning points in the life course primarily as times when people move between different sets of social networks. While these studies acknowledge that rites of passage occur within particular physical spaces in which material objects are present, the importance of such objects has received little attention. I explore one particular role transition—moving away to college—and illustrate that objects play a central role in how students construct their identities. Students at “Midwestern” University make strategic choices about which objects to leave at home as anchors of prior identities and which ones to bring to school as markers of new identities. Moreover, I suggest that the meanings of these two categories of objects differ by gender. I argue that this case opens up the possibility that objects play a much more central part in role transitions than social scientists have acknowledged. This study also challenges existing assumptions about different processes of identity formation. Therefore, it engenders the need for additional research about how people reinterpret objects during role transitions, and about the different meanings that objects may have for the constructions of masculinity and femininity.
In this paper social pasts are considered to be foundations of everyday interpersonal life, including everyday situated action. We distinguish social pasts from culture by noting that the former involves recognition of specific joint acts and social placements while the latter involves recognition of ties to acts and placements in general. We further distinguish shared pasts–which refer to specific and previous joint acts or social placements that interactors constructed together–from common pasts–which refer to specific and previous joint acts or social placements that interactors constructed with others. We assess the importance of using either common or shared pasts in the course of completing and simplifying complex and everyday transactions so as to create an appearance of routine-ness in relation to constructing these acts.
This paper concerns problems in the successful transition to adulthood for young people in middle-class American families. We call the most obvious symptom of this problem the returning young adult syndrome. We argue that this symptom points to broader questions of young adults' (YA) deviance from parental expectations of the YAs' autonomy, parental anomie, erratic performance by YAs in adult roles, and substantial intrafamilial conflict. We argue that the issue has emerged from separation-individuation tensions and the YAs' ambivalence about their capacity to play adult roles, coupled with more volatile causes, including postwar nurturance of children's rights, more recent legitimation of parents' rights to develop themselves, and the still more recent contraction in the opportunity structure for young adults. Two likely outcomes are increased YA capacity to play modified adult roles and decreases in parents' expectations about YAs' performance.
At the Annual Meeting in May 1974, the American Academy awarded its first Social Science Prize to Clifford Geertz for his significant contributions to social anthropology. Mr. Geertz has taught at Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Chicago; in 1970 he became the first Professor of the Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Mr. Geertz' research has centered on the changing religious attitudes and habits of life of the Islamic peoples of Morocco and Indonesia; he is the author of Peddlers and Princes: Social Changes and Economic Modernization in Two Indonesian Towns (1963), The Social History of an Indonesian Town (1965), Islam Observed: Religious Developments in Morocco and Indonesia (1968), and a recent collection of essays, The Interpretation of Cultures (1973). In nominating Mr. Geertz for the award, the Academy's Social Science Prize Committee observed, "each of these volumes is an important contribution in its own right; together they form an unrivaled corpus in modern social anthropology and social sciences." Following the presentation ceremony, Mr. Geertz delivered the following communication before Academy Fellows and their guests.
This article seeks to illuminate some of the social psychological correlates of social mobility. It proceeds from the observation that while a great deal is known about aggregate rates of mobility and the factors that inhibit or enhance persons' movement through social structures, far less is known about the way individuals define, interpret, comprehend, and give meaning to their own movement through social space. In-depth interview data from 25 professionals who grew up in working- or lower-class circumstances suggests that such a background deeply influences persons' perceptions and actions throughout their occupational lives. The professionals whose own words we will hear, all between 50 and 60 years of age, have “made it” in the occupational world. And they have done it by traversing great social distances. As the recount their stories of becoming doctors, lawyers, academics, and businesspersons, they also mention over and again how their motives, strategic occupational choices, and self-images are connected to the circumstances of their origins. Class and ethnic background is an important “frame” within which persons understand, experience, and create their careers.
Text: book; for undergraduates. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The book is a descriptive study of the effects of conflict of two cultures on the personality of individuals actively partaking of both; life-history documents, published and unpublished, are the principal source of data. Among the racial hybrid groups considered are the Eurasians of India, the Cape colored of South Africa, the mulattoes of the United States, the colored people of Jamaica, the Indo-Europeans of Java, the part-Hawaiians, and the mixed populations of Brazil. Among the cultural hybrids are the educated natives of imperial dominions, Jews, and immigrants. There are chapters on personality traits, adjustment to the hybrid situation, the sociological significance of marginal persons, and the principal types of adjustment—nationalism, the taking of an intermediary role, and assimilation or "passing." Robert E. Park writes an introduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals. The hospital itself imposes a special environment in which the meanings of behavior can easily be misunderstood. The consequences to patients hospitalized in such an environment—the powerlessness, depersonalization, segregation, mortification, and self-labeling—seem undoubtedly countertherapeutic.
I do not, even now, understand this problem well enough to perceive solutions. But two matters seem to have some promise. The first concerns the proliferation of community mental health facilities, of crisis intervention centers, of the human potential movement, and of behavior therapies that, for all of their own problems, tend to avoid psychiatric labels, to focus on specific problems and behaviors, and to retain the individual in a relatively non-pejorative environment. Clearly, to the extent that we refrain from sending the distressed to insane places, our impressions of them are less likely to be distorted. (The risk of distorted perceptions, it seems to me, is always present, since we are much more sensitive to an individual's behaviors and verbalizations than we are to the subtle contextual stimuli that often promote them. At issue here is a matter of magnitude. And, as I have shown, the magnitude of distortion is exceedingly high in the extreme context that is a psychiatric hospital.)
The second matter that might prove promising speaks to the need to increase the sensitivity of mental health workers and researchers to the Catch 22 position of psychiatric patients. Simply reading materials in this area will be of help to some such workers and researchers. For others, directly experiencing the impact of psychiatric hospitalization will be of enormous use. Clearly, further research into the social psychology of such total institutions will both facilitate treatment and deepen understanding.
I and the other pseudopatients in the psychiatric setting had distinctly negative reactions. We do not pretend to describe the subjective experiences of true patients. Theirs may be different from ours, particularly with the passage of time and the necessary process of adaptation to one's environment. But we can and do speak to the relatively more objective indices of treatment within the hospital. It could be a mistake, and a very unfortunate one, to consider that what happened to us derived from malice or stupidity on the part of the staff. Quite the contrary, our overwhelming impression of them was of people who really cared, who were committed and who were uncommonly intelligent. Where they failed, as they sometimes did painfully, it would be more accurate to attribute those failures to the environment in which they, too, found themselves than to personal callousness. Their perceptions and behavior were controlled by the situation, rather than being motivated by a malicious disposition. In a more benign environment, one that was less attached to global diagnosis, their behaviors and judgments might have been more benign and effective.
The field of developmental disabilities is fraught with ethical issues relating to power relationships between care providers and consumers. In this article, we discuss the potential conflicts that may arise in power relationships between individuals with developmental disabilities and professionals. We describe theoretical and practical aspects of these potential conflicts. The current political and social issues within the arena of developmental disabilities encourages autonomy, empowerment, and individualism. Although we encourage and value individual autonomy, we contend that the influence of professionals in certain situations also has an important role. This influence and support must be done in a sensitive manner with ongoing communication and mutual respect.